Remember that only the Top 100 books in each category get featured in that category. That means if your book is ranked #101, you get absolutely no exposure from being in that category. So you need to pick categories that you can actually rank your book on. These least competitive categories are so uncompetitive that you could literally sell one or two books and get ranked as one of the top #100 books in any of these categories.

The less you’re currently selling, the lower your sales rank will be on Amazon and the less competitive categories you should choose. As you gain more sales momentum and better sales ranking, you can switch your categories to more competitive ones which will send you more traffic and sales.

Here’s a list of the Top #100 least competitive categories on Amazon Kindle.

To make the list easier for you to read and understand, we removed the “Kindle eBooks -> ” text string from the data in the table.

Just know that all these bestseller lists are for the Kindle store, NOT the “Books” category on Amazon (which includes paperbacks, hardcovers, ebooks and audiobook sales). This list here is purely for Kindle ebooks and Kindle sales.

Kindle Category Rankings

We tracked rankings for 3 different books in each category: The #1 book which is selling the most, the #50 book in the middle, and the #100 book which just barely made the list. We ranked the lists based on 1) how hard they are to rank for and 2) on how well the average book is selling on the list.

For example, at the time we collected this data, the #100 book in Microscopes & Microsocopy list was ranked at #2,322,889 in the Kindle store. That means that if you wanted your ebook to appear on that list, you had to have a rank of #2,322,889 or better to make the #100 spot. Just one ebook sale in the last 30 days would do it!

What You Can Learn from Amazon’s Bestseller Lists

One big thing you can learn from this list is that 97 out of 100 of the least competitive bestseller lists on Amazon are for nonfiction. The only fiction categories on this list are children’s ebooks. Children’s ebooks are a very tiny market compared to major fiction genres like romance, science fiction, fantasy, thriller, suspense, mystery, etc.

There are a few reasons why almost all of the least competitive bestseller lists on Kindle are predominantly nonfiction.

Second, there are very few fiction bestseller lists compared to nonfiction. When you publish your ebook on Kindle using KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing), you’ll notice that when you select a category, you can choose fiction or nonfiction as a filter. The fiction filter provides a very small list of bestseller lists whereas the nonfiction filter provides thousands of options which can be overwhelming.

At Bestseller Ranking Pro, we keep an up-to-date list of every single bestseller list for Amazon Kindle ebooks and physical books. What we’ve found is that only 9.7% of the bestseller lists on Kindle are for fiction – the other 90.3% are nonfiction bestseller lists (categories). That’s a huge difference, and that’s why the most competitive categories on Kindle are almost always for fiction.

Because fiction is a bigger market (meaning more sales), and because there are fewer bestseller lists for fiction titles on Amazon Kindle, there are many nonfiction categories with almost no competition and very few fiction bestseller lists with low competition.

*In this list, we left out all Kindle categories where there were less than 100 books in the category. Technically, there are some even less competitive Kindle bestseller lists that have less than 100 books in them. That would mean that simply selling one book in that category would rank you on those lists since there’s not enough competition to fill the list completely yet. We’ll share a list of those non-competitive bestseller lists in a future post.

Note: Amazon sales rankings are updated hourly, and the rankings for any and all Amazon bestseller lists change frequently. Amazon may delete old categories, merge multiple categories together, and/or create new categories at any time. For the most up-to-date Amazon sales rankings and bestseller lists, check out www.BestSellerRankingPro.com

Tom Corson-Knowles is the founder of TCK Publishing, and the bestselling author of 27 books including Secrets of the Six-Figure author. He is also the host of the Publishing Profits Podcast show where we interview successful authors and publishing industry experts to share their tips for creating a successful writing career.